I Like to Watch

Dec. 10, 2006 | As Neil Young once so memorably sang, a man needs a maid. A woman, on the other hand, needs a combination of a maid, a nanny, a masseuse, a therapist and a certified public accountant, one who also cooks, teaches yoga and knows how to get dog hair off fuzzy sweaters. Aforementioned woman wouldn't mind if her maid/nanny/CPA/etc. also possessed basic secretarial skills and was particularly good at, say, writing witty thank-you notes or even longish letters to close relatives. It also wouldn't hurt if she were a gardener, a dog sitter and a notary public who dabbled in copyright law, or maybe a wet nurse with a background in prostitution and a license to drive heavy vehicles.

We live in a service economy, after all, where the ultimate goal is to pay other people to do every single mundane activity that might be asked of us, so that we can spend our time doing more important things, like eating crème-filled crullers and flipping idly through Christmas catalogs for gifts we might want our maid/assistant/aromatherapist to purchase for our family. (Actually, since she's the one who writes them letters and fields their phone calls, she should probably choose their gifts, too.)

Ah, the American dream! To fulfill exactly none of our God-given roles, escaping instead into the alternative reality of televised entertainments, ultra-violent video games and the Internets. Just imagine it! Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could while away every single waking minute on My Yahoo and Google News, while someone far more qualified than you scrubbed your bathtub and walked your dogs and paid your bills and breast-fed your baby and massaged your husband's feet? Oh, how I long to lie around like Jabba the Hutt, big and soft and purposeless, content to do nothing but glower over my service staff, chuckling heartily at the outrageousness of their modest requests ("Jabba no botha!") and shoving live frogs down my gullet!

Money talks, boshuda walks

Ah, but if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride! Or rather, beggars would pay someone else to ride, and to brush down their horses and feed them and clean out their stalls and so on. But wishes aren't horses, so beggars are surrounded by dirty dishes and scummy bathtubs and crying babies. Beggars daydream about lives that are glamorous and special while they microwave chicken pot pies and pull dog hairs off their sweaters and navigate lives that are one "Calgon, take me away!" moment after another. Beggars can't be choosers ... because they're losers.

For further proof, just ask Liz Lemon, Tina Fey's character on "30 Rock" (9:30 p.m. Thursdays on NBC), who's constantly being told by those around her just how lame every aspect of her life is. Take the night that Liz is working late, and her boss Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) comes in and finds her eating a wilty little sandwich at her desk:

Jack: Lemon, what tragedy happened in your life that you insist upon punishing yourself with all this mediocrity?

Liz: What, because I'm eating a turkey sub?

Jack: Your turkey sub, your clothes, the fact that a woman of your resources and position lives like some boxcar hobo, or maybe it's the fact that while I'm saying all this, you have a piece of lettuce stuck in your hair.

Unlike the suave heroes of Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60," the other show this season set behind the scenes of a "Saturday Night Live"-type sketch comedy show, Liz is a TV writer who's not only something of a schlumpy loser, but she's recently resumed dating her lame ex-boyfriend, Dennis, a guy who sells beepers and is allergic to all fish that isn't fried. When Jenna (Jane Krakowski), one of the stars of Liz's show, finds out Liz has started seeing Dennis again, she's floored, but Liz has a perfectly convincing explanation:

Jenna: So when did this happen?

Liz: Well, last week was my birthday, and everyone forgot except Dennis. And he called and we went out, and it wasn't too weird!

Jenna: And how is the sex?

Liz: Fast, and only on Saturdays. It's perfect!

Liz is not just the antidote to the smug, self-important, melodramatic boy-men of "Studio 60, " she's also the antidote to every adorable, perky, good-natured heroine on TV. That's right, I mean you, Calista Flockhart and Anne Heche and Sarah Paulson, you with your deeply feminine values and your giggling fits and your cute little button noses. Liz not only isn't adorable and sweet, she's irritable and sort of weird and she always settles for less. Whether she's dancing like a sad honky to Chamillionaire in the writer's room or making the racist assumption that another actor on the show, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan), can't read, Liz makes mistakes that are far more pathetic than sympathetic. Liz is the human embodiment of a bad hair day, and so naturally I love her like a sister.

Next page: The best thing about "30 Rock": Alec Baldwin